Social Media and the Amplifier Effect

The internet and it’s introduction into commercial use profoundly changed the world we live in. So much so that many of us could hardly remember a time pre-internet. It has engulfed our daily lives. It has transformed the way we go about everything. And most uniquely, once we follow the chronological time line of communications, we experience the vast ambiguity and grandness of unlimited information and access to it.

Just as previous methods of communications amplified information, stories, news, products and celebrity, the internet has undeniably been acting in the same amplifying manner. Well, at least to the degree that is has continued down the previously established path communications has taken to amplifying information stories, news, products and celebrity. But then something significant happened. Something manifested in the commercialization of the internet.

Chris Anderson in The Long Tail would say this is the effect of democratization of the web. Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point would effectively describe it to that titled effect. With Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan taking due part in explaining the truly unprecedented existence and nature of it. And though the internet increasingly became an amplifier of everything the world had to offer as a result of easy-access, the sudden increase of amateur creations and exposure to a seemingly infinite world, social media has established itself as the ultimate amplifier.

Social media essentially represents the manifestations and the evolution of our behaviours and actions within everything online, digital and web-orientated. And it has allowed everything to become online, digital and web-orientated. When I say everything, I literally mean everything. The good, the bad, the useless, the insightful, the profitable, the embellished, the lucky, the emotional have all been amplified. The amplifier effect bares no bias. Nor does it give privilege or favour anything directly. It’s sole purpose is to amplify, everything. It is everything we are in this social media world. It is everything we perceive to be through are own perceptions.

The further we continue to use social media extensively, the further we will continually see an unprecedented levels of growing social media manifestations. From the growing precedence of measuring influence and significant effects of social authority on search, to the gamification and brandification of our social presence, the amplifier effect will impose behaviours of amplification on to our social media actions activities.

The resulting impact of this has glorified, popularized and hyped events, actions and individuals that were ordinary, everyday and commonplace pre-social media into something beyond wild expectations and possibility. It promotes existence and creates validity. Social media itself has fallen victim and benefactor to the cruelty and kindness of this effect. Ubiquitous and transient, as it pushes you forward towards unlimited opportunity with one hand, it drags you into nothingness with the other. An on-going cycle of self-perpetuation and metamorphosis.

The reality of the is situation is that the majority of what occurs within social media and the world around it really has no definitive explanation, other than the information we borrow from existing disciplines. The greater our intelligence grows and the more we become capable of doing the more our understanding of everything around us seems to lessen. In fact, much of anything we have today can be credited to  a series of random, lucky and unexpected occurrences and manifestations. The cause of this lays in the very essence of the amplifier effect. Think about everything you’ve done, witnessed and completed to this point. What brought you there? Why were you drawn by it? What conveyed you to this present time? We are all active proponents of amplification, whether you choose to believe it or not. We are effected by it and the amplifications surrounding us.

(Photo credit)

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